By Dustin Cabeal

Killing Bites is a story that you can understand the existence of, but at the same time question the existence. If it were a video game, you would totally understand it. In fact, for those that remember and have played Blood Roar will probably find something to like about this series.

Usually, I would say that at the core, this is a story about people that can morph into animals and fight to the death. More than likely you’d be like, cool, I gotta check this out! But, it’s not just that. That’s what it could have merely been about, and hell, maybe it started off that simple but got lost in the boobies along the way.

The episode starts off with a van of men kidnapping a teenage girl. They’re planning on raping and killing her, but the guy they suckered into driving the van is freaking out. We’re basically supposed to buy that this guy is a decent dude that somehow got caught up with rapists and murderers. Luckily for him, the girl kills all the dudes when he has his moment of conviction in which he’s going to stop them. She tells him not to look in the back of the van and gives him instructions on where to drive. Once there he gets out and pukes his brains out… The puke was funny because the animation didn’t match anything else in the show. These people are all hyperdetailed with thick black linework, and the vomit had no detail to it. The dude, Yuuya, runs away terrified by all the other dead bodies in the junkyard location. He runs into a dude that explains what the girl is, a Therianthrope. Which is a human-animal hybrid made by science! Goddamn, you science! You just never know when to stop do you?!

Yuuya’s presence in the story is entirely unnecessary. You’ll question every moment he’s left alive because until they create a reason for him to stay alive… he has none. He’s a witness, and worse yet they explain everything to him. That the country is run by four clans that use these fights to settle scores and maintain balance. Obviously, our main character Hitomi wins her first fight. If that’s a spoiler to you then jeez, look at some promotional material. She’s all over it, and it’s a fight to the death… kind of obvious. Her opponent is an undefeated Lion. She dodges everything thrown at her, but it’s when Leo the fucking Lion does his roar which freezes his enemies, that she finally reveals that she’s a Brute Ratel… or a honey badger. That’s right; the internet has influenced anime. A sexy honey badger, just what we needed.

The convenient storytelling continues as Yuuya wakes up the next day and after a classic boob grab it’s revealed that of course, Hitomi is staying with him. Her benefactor/creator assigns her to be his bodyguard and puts him in charge of betting on her next fight. For some fucking reason. Nothing makes a lick of sense when it comes to Yuuya. He’s a cheap way to expose the audience to this world, but it's not necessary. At some point, you have to think it’ll turn into a love story or some shit, but let’s not forget she’s a murderer and he was almost a rapist. Who exactly is rooting for these two to get together? The episode ends with Yuuya taking a blade in the leg from a Porcupine woman that flashes her boobs at him. He probably didn’t even feel it considering all the blood in his body was occupying his little Yuuya.

The art isn’t terrible, but it’s just your basic beefcake, cheesecake stuff. There’s gore; it’s decent. There are boobs; they look like anime boobs. The voice acting is solid, but they’re basically archetypes. Neither the artwork or the voice acting is going to change the quality of the story suddenly. The story is trying exceptionally hard to be mature, gritty and sexy. It’s not doing any of those particularly well because all of it is so over the top. Stepping back and looking at the episode as a whole, it’s a goofy mess. I can understand that it exists because so much of anime is male sex fantasies. The artwork is great, so it’s an easy sell, but the story feels like it’s trapped in a time and era in which we were more accepting of stories about mostly naked animal women fighting to the death and having their boobs grabbed. Don’t get me wrong, a story like this can and should exist, but it should also be excellent. Everything should perfect, and right now it has a significant weakness… the entire plot and main character. Also, the title sucks.